Nowadays, many e-merchants use the Shopify e-commerce platform to develop their e-commerce site. The reason is that it is a complete and intuitive solution that offers many features. However, Shopify is obviously not the only one on the market for creating an online store. While it is an effective solution, it may not lend itself to everyone. With its multiple features, Shopify can become expensive compared to some alternatives, especially for a small business owner. There are competitors such as Prestashop vs Shopify that offer cheaper services than those offered by Shopify. This article introduces you to solutions that are less expensive than Shopify.
Shopify: Strengths and Limitations
Before we start making a comparison of Prestashop vs Shopify, let’s quickly see the strengths and weaknesses.
Benefits
Here are some positives about Shopify:
Most Popular Ecommerce Platform
Shopify is the most popular ecommerce platform for successful ecommerce entrepreneurs. You can also see this everywhere on YouTube or Instagram. Many successful ecommerce people use Shopify, and for good reason.
Designed for e-commerce
From the beginning, Shopify was designed for ecommerce. Many of these other platforms add ecommerce functionality afterward, but that’s not the case with Shopify. This one is designed for ecommerce entrepreneurs.
Ease of use
Shopify is one of the easiest tools to use to build an ecommerce site. Its back office is very intuitive. It is ideal for beginners and very easy to make your own. In addition, it has a multitude of features.
14-day free trial
You can also give it a 14-day trial after launching your store. At Shopify, you try before you buy.
Useful applications
Shopify offers a multitude of apps and plugins and integrates with all sorts of platforms. In general, if you need a particular feature, you will find someone who did it and wrote a code. So you can just click and Shopify will do the rest. On the other hand, with some ecommerce platforms, if you want a particular feature, you will need to hire a professional, designer or coder, to create this plugin for you and it can be excessively expensive. With Shopify, it’s likely that they’ve already added a lot of plugins that you can use for free or that will come back cheaper than if you hire a professional.
Template selection
Shopify offers a range of over 70 professionally designed themes (including a few free themes). You can even design one yourself using the Liquid programming language.
Good for dropshipping
Shopify integrates apps like Ordoro, Oberlo, Modalyst to make it easy for you to establish a dropshipping business.
Community Support
Can’t find exactly what you need? There’s a Shopify community for this. The Shopify community provides you with resources that can help you grow your business. In the discussion forums available to merchants and others, you can take part in professional conversations. This will provide you with technical support from community members.
Bounds
Before we talk about Prestashop vs Shopify, here are some limitations of Shopify:
Transaction fees
Technically, you don’t have to pay any additional fees if you use Shopify Payments. However, it is not yet available worldwide. Apart from that, you can pay up to 2% for each transaction.
Regular content creation
IShopify is great for product pages, but not enough for blog pages. There are options, but Shopify takes a “store first” approach. What experienced webmasters might find unsatisfactory.
Creation of multilingual shops
It’s not easy or cheaper to create a Shopify online store in multiple languages. The simplest option would be to use an app.
Shopify SEO
Unfortunately, Shopify has a few SEO issues (e.g. complicated URL structures) that can be annoying for some. Poorly constructed URL structures don’t promote the best possible ranking performance. In addition, you cannot customize your checkout page. However, you can still rank first with a Shopify site.
Shopify’s competitors
Now that we’ve recaptured Shopify’s strengths and limitations, we’ll take a look at Shopify’s top competitors.
Prestashop vs Shopify
Let’s start this list with Prestashop vs Shopify. Prestashop is an ecommerce platform that allows you to sell an unlimited number of products. It is free and does not charge transaction fees. Technically, let’s say it’s free. However, you need to buy a domain and pay a web host to use your store.
Being a self-hosted solution, setting up Prestashop can be difficult for some beginners. However, thanks to its partnerships with providers such as 1 & 1, Prestashop has a hosted version that you can turn to. Besides, when considering Prestashop vs. Shopify, Prestashop is a multilingual solution. It supports multiple languages. This makes it easier for you to sell internationally and allows you to accept multiple currencies.
However, it’s not as complete in themes and templates as Shopify. In reality, you only get one previously installed theme. But, the usability is as good as you can expect from a free platform. To improve your site, Prestashop offers several modules. Unfortunately, not all of them are free. It will be necessary to opt for the premium modules. Being an open source solution, it will be difficult to scale your store as it grows. Hiring an external developer may be helpful.
Anyway, Prestashop offers many guides and tutorials available for its users. You can browse its community forum for help. To get assistance from a technical expert, you need to disburse money. However, with the resources at your disposal, you can create an online store with a less expensive initial investment.
WooCommerce
Another Prestashop vs Shopify alternative is WooCommerce. If you use or will like to use WordPress, then you can count WooCommerce on Shopify’s list of competitors. WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows e-merchants to very simply convert their WordPress sites into an online store.
WooCommerce is the most interesting platform for a very good reason: it is free. It’s technically free, but there are things you’ll have to pay for. The main reason why many are interested in it is its free and ease of customization. It is technically the most popular ecommerce platform. Technically because WooCommerce has a lot of users because of its free. So it’s a great advantage to be on a platform that has a lot of users.
WooCommerce integrates its own secure payment processor as well as its shopping cart. This open-source platform is worth considering by small businesses that already use WordPress for their website.
However, when you look at the bottom, WooCommerce isn’t actually totally free. In reality, you have to pay for hosting, which can be expensive. You still have to pay a company to host your WooCommerce site. Plus, it’s not easy to use like Shopify. WordPress being an open source platform. This means that you’ll need coding knowledge if you want to build the ecommerce site you want. It is not really recommended to someone who has only a small technical skill. Otherwise, you’ll need the ability of a web developer to create one for you.
Prestashop vs Shopify: Magento
Magento is also a Prestashop vs Shopify alternative. It is an advanced ecommerce platform. It offers both versions: free and paid. Premium options are designed for businesses with significant revenues. If it is popular, the reason is that it is highly customizable. However, you need to hire a designer to code your website, to customize it. If you are not ready to do this, then you need to be willing to devote a lot of time to learning the platform. This is especially the case if you want a personalized site.
If you’re looking to not spend a lot of money to build your website, Magento might be a good option for you if you opt for the free version that’s open-source. The free version of Magento does not charge transaction fees. Unlike Shopify, this version doesn’t offer with free themes except the default one. To buy themes, templates and extensions, you need to go to the Magneto marketplace. If you are a beginner, Magento can be very difficult to understand. To not waste hours, prefer Shopify if you’re just starting out.
Prestashop vs Shopify: WiziShop
WiziShop is a French competitor to Shopify. Wanting to make e-commerce accessible to as many people as possible, WiziShop is positioning itself as a real competitor of Shopify since the platform offers a very simple system to create and develop its trademark. Besides that, the basic subscription offered by WiziShop is a bit cheaper than Shopify’s. WiziShop offers many very useful features for ecommerce.
In addition, with WiziShop, you have access to very useful video training to get you started. There is also a Business Coach ready to accompany you and answer your questions when you have them. Being a French platform, all the help you receive is in French.
Wix
Wix is a platform that offers to create a website for free. This is another very popular Prestashop vs Shopify alternative that allows you to build your site quickly and easily. Wix offers a variety of themes, additional features and modules like Shopify. However, unlike Shopify, Wix is not a specialized ecommerce site. Rather, it is a tool that makes it easy to create a professional-quality site for free.
The price of the Wix solution starts from $7/month and the highest plan is $25 per month. This means that the lowest cost for a Shopify plan is the lowest cost on the Wix platform. However, when comparing prices between the two platforms, remember to consider the quality of the results you get for your price. Most users feel that Shopify offers them a more comprehensive online ecommerce solution. With a dedicated ecommerce platform like Shopify, all the features seem to come together in one place. On the other hand, if you’re extremely limited in your budget and want a solution that focuses more on the website itself, Wix might be Shopify’s best competitor and the option for you.
Prestashop vs Shopify: Squarespace
Squarespace is the all-in-one solution for creating a design website with a drag-and-drop feature for creating an online store. It incorporates exclusive packages for ecommerce users. Like Shopify, you get an intuitive back office to manage everything about your store. Even though Squarespace doesn’t have as many features as Shopify, it has all the basic features to get your business up and running.
Even without coding skills, you can create an attractive store using the variety of free themes. The price of the BASIC Commerce plan starts from $26/month and with an annual subscription, you’ll get a free domain name. There is no limit to the number of products you can sell on your site. And most importantly, you are free of any transaction fees. With a monthly subscription, you can save up to 30% annually by signing up for the Business plan starting at $18/month. So if you want a simple and less expensive solution than Shopify, Squarespace would be a good alternative. However, be aware that you will be limited when it comes to the advanced options needed for the development of your business.
In short
At the end of the comparison between Shopify vs Prestashop, we remember that even if the price is a determining factor in the choice, your goals are all as much. Whether you’re considering, Shopify vs Prestashop vs Magento, do you have to ask yourself what’s important to you? Whether you choose Shopify, Prestashop, or Magento, it all depends on what you want to do and your goals for your online store. Is a less expensive solution than Shopify or Prestashop really what you need to achieve your business goals? Were you looking for an online presence to spread the word about your brand or did you just want to make more sales? Try the platforms and see which one will save you the most compared to time or money. Before you make your choice. Always focus your business decisions on the solution that best meets your needs.
